A Man Blames Google Maps For Making Him Fall Into A Ice Lake

Currently, Google Maps is one of the most popular navigation apps for smartphones. However, it is being accused of having misguided a man to the frozen Mississippi River, which led to his fall right after that. As reported by CBS, the accident happened at night near the Stone Arch Bridge in the Minneapolis downtown. That man was walking across the frozen river, then suddenly, he fell through the ice. 

The man mentioned in the story is reported to be partly submerged in the ice until being rescued by the local firefighters. Answering the question regarding the reason for his walk across the frozen river, he claimed that Google Maps had guided him to do so. After the incident, he has suffered from slight hypothermia. 

On the other hand, the fire department told CBS that probably Google Maps had instructed the man to cross the bridge, not the river. However, his saying is seen to be a bit strange because only mapped roads appear in Google Maps. Although this app has recorded similar feedbacks before, walking through a frozen river is somewhat too far.  

Last week, Google Maps was tricked by a man carrying 99 smartphones which made everyone believe that a huge traffic jam was happening. This immediately turned out that he was just gathering all his phones opening Google Maps on a wagon. Google said its map feature is able to differentiate between bicycles and cars in many countries, like India, but until now, they have not included traveling by wagon as a transport.  

This month, Google Maps has celebrated its 15 years old with a new redesigned logo and some upgrade features. The new logo is now minimalized and colored by yellow, red, blue and green. The background is replaced with solid white as well. Regarding new features, two new tabs have been added to the existing ones. Now, you can see five tabs in Google Maps: Explore, Commute, Saved, Contribute and Updates.